Four Focused Swim Workouts

By Erika Lilley, CSCS

For Active.com

When you find yourself heading to the aquatics center on a regular basis without a plan, it's time to refocus and establish your purpose for swim training. Otherwise, you'll see minimal results and soon get bored of staring at that black line at the bottom of your lane as you do the same sets over and over again.

If you have never been a competitive swimmer or don't belong to an organized Master's program, you may not know how to put together a workout that is more than just "jump in and swim for 30 minutes."

Below are four solid, fundamental workouts that offer some variety and purpose, not to mention some "fun" to your training program. Each workout is designed with a specific theme: technique, sprint, distance and interval training. You are free to alter them as you wish—make them longer or shorter—depending on your training schedule. However, each offers a solid template for the percentage you should allot to each Main Set, so adjust your total yardage accordingly.

You can also adjust the intervals to your ability level (1:30, 1:25, 1:20) for each workout in the main set—especially when performing The Quickie workout. Try to keep each set descending: that is, do each 50, 100 or 200 faster than the first one you performed, so your final one is the fastest.

Within 2 Miles

Activities near you will have this indicator

Within 2 Miles

ACTIVE is the leader in online event registrations from 5k running races and marathons to softball leagues and local events. ACTIVE also makes it easy to learn and prepare for all the things you love to do with expert resources, training plans and fitness calculators.